No sir, what you have cited there is not the Commission report, which has not even fully come out yet, but a staff memorandum that was released to the press, and was dissavowed by the two leading members (one from each party) on the Commission. As a matter of fact, the Commissioners cited went on to say that it was obvious that there had been connections between Bin Laden and Hussein ... just not in relation tot he specific attack of 9-11, a conclusion with which the Bush administration has never dissagreed.
I quote this editorial from the N.Y. Times for your consideration. You have to sign up to actually read the link, so I thought a full quotation was in order. Here it is in full:
"The Zelikow Report
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: June 21, 2004
E-mail:
safire@nytimes.com
WASHINGTON "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."
All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.
"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.
The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")
But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.
That paragraph extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.
Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.
Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports."
Not involved? Another commission member tells me he did not see the Zelikow bombshell until the night before its release. Moreover, the White House, vetting the report for secrets, failed to raise an objection to a Democratic bonanza in the tricky paragraph leading to the misleading "no Qaeda-Iraq tie."
What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?
1. Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.
2. Set the record straight, in evidentiary detail, on every contact known between Iraq and terrorist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's operations in Iraq. Include the basis for the Clinton-era "cooperating in weapons development" statement.
3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with
www.edwardjayepstein.com.)
4. Show how the failure to retaliate after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole affected 9/11, how removing the director of central intelligence from running the C.I.A. would work, and how Congress's intelligence oversight failed abysmally.
5. Stop wasting time posturing on television and get involved writing a defensible commission report."
Mark, do you dispute the facts of this editorial? If so, in what part, and based upon what evidence? Everything I have seen in the non-CNN, non-NPR channels of information have shown that the report avowing "no credible evidence" of a connection between Hussein and Bin Laden terrorists was incomplete and misleading at best ... an attempt at anti-Bush spin based upon known falsehoods at worst.
I also find it interesting what you wrote in your last sentence to me. I quote:
"I believe you are confusing your blind support for BUSH with the findings of the commission.
"
So, does anyone who disagrees with you have a "blind support" for the president? Do you feel the need to "put me in my place" when you engage in intellectual discussions? Must you be condescending in your attitudes in all political discussions, or just in those in which you engage conservatives? I am really interested, because I find it fascinating that those on the left cannot simply discuss the ideas of the debate. They always seem to have to couch things in an issue of intellectual honesty. Because they cannot seem to grasp that other equally intelligent people might actually look at the facts and come down on the other side of the debate.
As a matter of fact, there are several things about which I disagree with the President. I do not have a blind belief in him or anything else, so you do not have to categorize me as some lemming-like moron. I actually have studied the scenario and found the weight of evidence to come down against the accusations of that staff report. Unfortunately, those evidences were not reported on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, or NBC. Wonder why? Of course that explains why you were unaware of the situation, doesn't it?